After 10 years of Westminster chaos, we’ve forgotten what ‘normal’ looks like

The old hands of today occasionally speak fondly of the times before the madness took hold, of the weeks that went by without significant news occurring, writes Marie Le Conte

He is not a stable leader at the best of times, and even a victory would leave him with a fractured parliamentary party (UK Parliament/AFP/Getty)

If a week is a long time in politics, what to make of a decade? Empires can rise and fall in the span of 10 years; entire careers can begin, bloom and fade. Can you remember what Westminster felt like in 2012? The coalition, the Olympics, Ed Miliband? We may as well be talking about an alien planet.

A decade is a long time anywhere, but it is practically endless in British politics, where few people stay in place for long and memories are often short. This matters because Westminster has no set way of being; a lot relies on habits, etiquette and conventions, all of which, in turn, rely on people knowing what they are.

Like community elders passing on ancient tales to younger generations, the old hands of SW1 often get to set the tone and remind fresh faces of crucial precedents. There is no “normal”; there are only formalised recollections. What happens if no one can remember when “normal” meant, well, just that?